The nationwide anguish over the death of George Floyd — who was shown on video last week struggling to breathe as a Minneapolis police officer pinned his neck to the ground for nearly nine minutes — rocked American cities over the weekend. Amid peaceful protests, sometimes violent responses by the police, and some looting, higher-education leaders sought to assure their communities that they, too, were bearing witness to the historic events.
In Minneapolis, where the uprisings began, the president of the University of Minnesota, Joan T. Gabel, announced last week that she was cutting some of its ties with the city’s police department. The announcement followed a demand by the student-body president, Jael Kerandi, that the university sever its partnership with the force. (The police department fired the four officers depicted in the video. The one shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.)
At a rally on Friday, students called for further action by the university’s administration, according to The Minnesota Daily. Speakers demanded that students be given a voice in the regulation of the campus police department, and that the officers be disarmed and their numbers reduced.
Students on campuses across the country joined in protesting. At the University of Missouri at Columbia, students marched on the quad, covering the head of a statue of Thomas Jefferson with a plastic bag.
At the University of Mississippi, someone spray-painted the words “Spiritual Genocide” on a Confederate monument on Saturday. The chancellor, Glenn Boyce, responded by saying he supported the relocation of the monument, a process that was already underway.
In Atlanta, two police officers were fired after they were shown on video dragging a student at Morehouse College and a student at Spelman College from a car and hitting them with a stun gun.
Nationwide, college presidents acknowledged the immense outrage over the killing of Floyd as well as the disproportionate toll of the novel coronavirus on communities of color. “This ongoing history of structural and sustained racism is a fundamental and deeply distressing injustice, here as elsewhere,” wrote Duke University’s president, Vincent E. Price.
Other leaders emphasized the role of colleges in combating bigotry. “It is the university’s responsibility to model principles of civility, respect, and understanding for both its campus family and its wider community,” wrote Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “Moreover, it is our duty to embody inclusivity and embrace diversity, and to educate others about their power.”
Commentary wasn’t limited to college presidents. At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the chief diversity officer, Robert M. Sellers, wrote a blog post titled “I Am So Tired.”
“These times really do raise for me the question of how long must we wait, plan, work, march, agitate, forgive, and vote before we have a society in which all lives matter equally, regardless of race or color,” he wrote. “In my bone-weary tired state this morning, before I even got out of bed, I asked myself why should I continue to fight to try to change a system that has proven time and time again that it simply does not regard me and people who look like me as fully human.”
Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, in Texas, praised the students and alumni who had joined the nationwide protests.
The messages from college presidents weren’t greeted with unanimous applause. At Harvard University, Lawrence C. Bacow emailed the campus with a list of personal beliefs, such as “I believe that one measure of the justness of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members” and “I believe that America should be a beacon of light to the rest of the world.”
Some observers criticized Bacow for being too vague and for failing to acknowledge how Harvard itself might help fuel systemic racism. (The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday evening.)
